Ye Olde Curiosity Shop focus area opening of “Telling Our Westside Stories: Work” Friday, Oct. 24, 2014 “Birthplace of Seattle Log House Museum Transcript by Kristen Legg Marcy Johnsen …in Seattle, and I certainly do, being born and raised here in Seattle. It’s always my pleasure because I was lucky enough to grow up in this very house — before it became a museum — and so I have this affinity for this house, this place, this land, and all that we do. And the fact that we have community partners is so terrific. So to have Ye Olde Curiosity Shop as a partner and having this exhibit is just so terrific. Thank you all for coming, and I hope you enjoy our panel. I’m sure we will. Clay Eals OK, I get to have some fun here because I used to be a journalist. If I were to have a gravestone it would say, “Journalist.” And so what we are going to do today, instead of making people make speeches, is I am going to ask some questions. I want to introduce you to the people whom you are going to hear from today. We have three generations of Jameses here today, and their family members. We have Joe James, who is the grandfather – grandfather? You are, but you’re also the grandson of J.E. (Joseph) “Daddy” Standley, who founded the Ye Olde Curiosity Shop in 1899, but I also hear that it may have been 1901. Maybe we will clear this up today. We have Joe’s son Andy, and he, you’re hands-on proprietor now. And then we have Neil, his son, and maybe the future, huh? Neil James (nods) Clay Eals Fourth generation. (laughs) Audience member Fifth. Clay Eals Fifth generation, that’s right! That’s right. And then we also have Peg Boettcher. She’s not part of the technical family, but I would say she’s part of the family, of course. And how would you like to have a job where your business card says that your title is “Chief Wrangler?” I think that’s the best job title I’ve ever heard of in my life. And that’s what Peg’s card says. And she really was the chief wrangler for our focus area of the exhibit. We have in this, we call this our large gallery, a theme called, “Telling our Westside Stories: Work.” And so everything in this gallery relates to work of some sort. Primarily it consisted of information that came from interviews that middle- school students did of elders in our community. But one thing we changed up for this display is that we created what we are calling a focus area over here. (Gestures to back left corner of room.) Prior to this being up, we had a focus on the Nucor Steel plant, which many of you know as the Bethlehem Steel plant for decades. We are focusing on Ye Olde Curiosity Shop now because of the direct West Seattle connections you will hear about, and it’s a lot of work, right? It fits the theme perfectly. So we are so glad to have this formal opening ceremony for this focus area right now. You also should know that our totem pole outside and our totem exhibit in the small gallery also are directly related to this family. Because we would not have a totem pole outside, or at Admiral Viewpoint and a long history there, without Daddy Standley’s persistent badgering of the city to get the Belvidere View Point cleaned up. He basically said — and we have the letters to prove it — he said, “The place is an eyesore. You’ve got to clean it up. And if you clean it up, I’ll give you a totem pole.” And they did. And he did. That was in 1939. 3:58 Clay Eals Let’s start with Joe. Joe James. Can you tell me, tell the whole crowd here, how you really came to know your grandfather? You lived with your grandfather up until you reach the age of 16, and so you got to know him quite well. Tell us, if we had Joe Standley in the room today, how would you describe him? How would we remember him? What kind of personality was he? Joe James He had a great sense of humor and loved to entertain people, talk to people in the shop. People would be looking at something to buy and he’d start talking about it, giving them all the history, and he’d fall in love with it all over again and then refuse to sell it to them. My dad, his son-in- law, who worked in the shop until he died in 1954, he was the one who was the salesman-type that entertained the people and loved to talk to people and show them around the shop and potentially sell them something. He was the salesman and my grandfather was the one who entertained everybody. And what was your other question? Clay Eals You lived with him. And I saw an interview of you one time where you said, “He was a one-man chamber of commerce.” Joe James He was, in his early days. He loved Seattle and he boosted Seattle anytime he could. And he really was a one-man chamber of commerce. Write letters to people all over the world telling them how great Seattle was. And after having lived back east, and in Denver, which is pretty dry, he just loved the Pacific Northwest. 5:58 Clay Eals When you were a youngster, did the sales bug infect you because of him? Joe James Well, of course, when you are a kid, something like the shop really appeals to you. It did the same thing with my son here (gestures to Andy), and also our grandson (gestures to Neil). But it was an interesting business, and I enjoyed it. Of course, the war came along, too. I started there when I was 12 in 1936 during an international convention of the Shriners, and I enjoyed working there. And then in high school, I’d work after school, and I’d work on Saturdays. But it was fascinating, and you’d meet a lot of interesting people from all over the world. I never could figure out exactly what I wanted to do. But as I got older and older, it just seemed like I would come back in the shop after the war and after I graduated from university. So I spent almost 60 years there, really. Clay Eals Now, most of us in this room are familiar with Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, but let’s pretend nobody knows what it is. How would you describe it to a stranger and what is its appeal? Joe James Well, curiosities really stretch people’s imaginations. We tried to handle items that were curios as well as maybe had some practical value. But it just seems like everybody is interested in the odd things and all that. That’s what we tried to handle. And also we tried to be fair with people. But we sold an awful lot of Indian items in the early days. We’d deal directly with the Indians almost on a daily basis. They’d come in there with their totem poles and their baskets or Indian masks. The shop is fascinating to people because of the variety and odd things from all over the world. 8:10 Clay Eals Can you describe why your grandfather focused on those items up in Alaska and B.C. and brought them on down here? What was the appeal to him? Joe James Well, we would have to go back to when he was 9 years old in the third grade in Steubenville, Ohio. He got a book from the teacher for having the neatest desk in the class. It told about all the wonders of nature and artifacts from all over the world and curios. And it so whetted his appetite that he spent the rest of his life collecting curios. As a boy, he used to roam the banks of the Ohio River and get Indian artifacts, and all kinds of Indian items. He collected those. And also across the river in nearby West Virginia. But, he just was very fascinated with it and spent his whole lifetime time collecting. Clay Eals And when did he arrive in Seattle? 9:25 Joe James Well, he worked in his father’s grocery store in Steubenville in – this goes back a little ways, but I’ll make it brief – and when he was about 21 years old he heard about the Denver Gold Rush, and so it whetted his appetite. So he packed up and went to Denver. He had been working in his father’s grocery store, and he started his own grocery store there in Denver. The first day he worked for somebody else, he was so upset about the way he was cheating the customers in the grocery store, he quit and went outside the town, and went on a little knoll to raise his hand up to God and swore that he would never work for anybody else as long as he lived. So he started his own grocery store there, which was a big success also, because, any interesting item, any curio, he’d tack it up in the grocery store. They said pretty soon you couldn’t see the groceries from the curios.